Word study

Blow

3 Hebrew and 1 Greek words behind this English word

The original-language words that the Berean Standard Bible translates with one of these: blow, blows, blowing. English often uses one word where Hebrew or Greek has several, each with its own shade of meaning. Under each word are verses where it is translated this way; choose the word itself for its full study: every verse, how else it is translated, the forms it takes and what the dictionaries say.

At a glance

How often each original word is translated “blow” or one of its forms.

Compare the Hebrew words side by side

Hebrew and Aramaic words (Old Testament)

  • תָּקַע tâqathrust, clap, give a blow, blasttranslated this way 15 times of its 65 uses · Strong’s H8628Verb  ·  Translated: blew 15, blow 11, sound 7, sounded 4

    Numbers 10:10 And on your joyous occasions, your appointed feasts, and the beginning of each month, you are to blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and peace offerings to serve as a reminder for you before your God. I am the LORD your God.”

    Joshua 6:4 Have seven priests carry seven rams’ horns in front of the ark. Then on the seventh day, march around the city seven times, while the priests blow the horns.

    Full study and all 60 verses →
  • מַכָּה makkâhblow, wound, slaughtertranslated this way 5 times of its 44 uses · Strong’s H4347Noun  ·  Translated: wounds 9, slaughter 7, wound 7, plagues 4

    Judges 11:33 With a great blow he devastated twenty cities from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the Israelites.

    1 Samuel 19:8 When war broke out again, David went out and fought the Philistines and struck them with such a mighty blow that they fled before him.

    Full study and all 43 verses →
  • מַגֵּפָה maggêphâhblow, slaughter, plague, pestilencetranslated this way 2 times of its 25 uses · Strong’s H4046Noun  ·  Translated: plague 18, slaughter 3, plagues 1, since the plague 1

    2 Chronicles 21:14 So behold, the LORD is about to strike your people, your sons, your wives, and all your possessions with a serious blow.

    Ezekiel 24:16 “Son of man, behold, I am about to take away the desire of your eyes with a fatal blow. But you must not mourn or weep or let your tears flow.

    Full study and all 25 verses →

Greek words (New Testament)

  • πνέω pnéōI blowtranslated this way 4 times of its 6 uses · Strong’s G4154Verb  ·  Translated: blew 2, blows 2, blowing 1, blow 1

    Luke 12:55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It will be hot,’ and it is.

    John 3:8 The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

    Full study and all 6 verses →
How to study a word well
  1. Start from the verse, not the dictionary. Find which Hebrew or Greek word stands in the verse you are studying. One English word often translates several different original words.
  2. Read every place the word is used. A word means what its writers used it to mean. The list of verses and the count by book show its range, and who uses it most.
  3. Look at how it is translated. A word rendered five different ways has a wider meaning than any one English word can carry.
  4. Notice the form. A command is not a statement, and a passive verb is something done to the subject. The form in your verse is part of the meaning.
  5. See what it keeps company with. The words that appear beside it again and again show how the Bible itself connects ideas.
  6. Then read the dictionaries. They give the considered view of scholars, with their evidence.
  7. Come back to the verse. Context decides. A word does not carry every one of its meanings into every verse, and where a word came from does not settle what it means in a sentence written centuries later.

Scripture text and translation counts: Berean Standard Bible. Full entry: Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (1906, public domain), in the digital edition Brown-Driver-Briggs Enhanced by unfoldingWord (Joel Ruark, J. de Joode), based on data by Eliran Wong and Stephen Ku; its additions are used under CC BY 4.0. Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible Project, CC BY 4.0. Hebrew-to-English verse numbering: original work of the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible available at https://github.com/openscriptures/morphhb, CC BY 4.0. We reformatted the data, linked the references to this site’s Bible text and left out words in other scripts that the source holds only as images. These are historical reference works; an entry gives its authors’ view, and a word’s meaning in any verse depends on how it is used there.